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Monday, May 7, 2012

Weekend Recap

This is going to be long..so everyone get some coffee and relax. Saturday morning Paul and I were up at 5 am to get ready to drive to Harriman State Park for his triathlon. I did as promised and got up without too much complaining. We got on the road and headed out for the race. Paul was pretty excited, and I think a little nervous. It was his first tri of the season and was hoping to place for his age group.

This wasn't staged or anything

During the drive I noticed the insane fog a few times, and really thought nothing of it. Once we started driving into the park, we could see nothing. I mean nothing. There was water on either side of us and I had no idea. We parked and Paul got in and all set up.

Then we waited, and waited, and waited. The fog was so bad that they kept pushing back the start. The hope was if they pushed it back enough the fog would burn off, and they could do the swim. We walked around a little and headed to the beach to check it out.

All ready to swim!

There is a lake...I swear

But seriously, where is the beach?

The race was supposed to start at 8am, and finally at 8:45 they called off the swim. Lots of disappointment all around, but I knew Paul was mostly upset because the swim is what he's best at. Everyone got out of swim gear and ready to run. The event turned into a 1.2 mile run, 11 mile bike, 3 mile run.

After some really great pre run stretching, that I'm not allowed to post pictures of

Mandatory pre race picture...ignore the tired eyes on my part

After some quick organizing by the race directors, everyone got lined up and ready to go. I have to say, the race directors did a great job. They made timely updates, and when they realized they couldn't do the swim, handled it very well with the line up for the run.

Start line

Finally at 9 it got started. Everyone went off in the same waves as they would of for the swim. They all went down one side, did the first loop of the run, and came back for the bike.

Running into the fog

The only time I was nervous about people running into each other was when the fastest from the first wave got back before the last wave went off. Luckily, no disasters.

Paul on his way back (not man in red)

Then they were off on the bike. I like triathlons for the main reason of there is always something to look at. By the time the last person leaves for the bike, it usually is only a few minutes before someone else gets back. In the mean time though, I take part in my favorite triathlon activity...puppy stalking.

Lassie!

Cute Puppy

Puppy that looks like a fox and I wanted to steal

Sadly, there were not many cute puppies at this race. After about 10 minutes or so the first bikers came back in to get ready to run and I was entertained again. I saw one man take out a rice director trying to get off his bike....don't worry everyone was ok so we can laugh about this.

Paul coming back from the bike

I headed over to the finish line after to wait and see Paul finish. There was some great entertainment at the end line as usual. People sprinting to the finish, guys hoping to finish before the girls that are just two or three steps ahead of them, and then this guy.

He did the whole race in this hat.

I guessed what time I thought Paul would come in, and was wrong. He killed it and came in way before.

We hung around at the end and took some pictures while waiting to see if Paul finished top in his age group.

There are clearly more details to this race that you can check out at his blog. This is just my spectator angle of it all. After this was done, Paul and I headed out to Rhode Island for the race. We checked into the hotel and over to packet pick up before it closed.

View from hotel was great

We ran into the Rock n Roll Providence crew at the expo, and they gave us a sneak peek at the medals for the race this year (umm they're awesome). Then we headed over for our pre race dinner at Dave n Busters.

Buffalo Chicken Slider amazingness (yes extra pickles on the side!)

We watched the Kentucky Derby, I picked the winner thank you very much! I sadly did not bet though and made nothing off of my selection. I mean come on, "I'll have another" it was clear no other horse had as good of a name.

We headed back to the hotel after and got everything ready for the next day. The hotel also had just about every cheerleader from age 5 to 15 there for a competition that weekend. I may or may not have yelled at a group of 7 year olds in the hallway at 10:15. In fairness, their parents were out to dinner so nobody else was around to yell at them. I also warned everyone I wanted a PR and didn't train so I was going to be a little on edge. Paul made me feel bad for about 10 minutes, and then there was more screaming, so I got over my guilt. At some point they all got yelled at by security and the parents came back, and I fell asleep. Before I knew it, it was race morning!